Do women need men more or vice versa?

CULTURE, thousands of years of history and socio-economic factors still strongly influence a person’s position in nowadays society. And it is only naturally for these aspects to have a powerful hold over women and men alike. After all, it is no easy feat to escape your ancestral ties even in the present.

Before women’s right to vote, their liberty to study in universities on the same footing with their opposite gender, their role in society had been quite different. Not only were they dependent on men, the few opportunities they did have almost always implied a relationship with a member of the male sex. Queens and revolutionaries aside, women in general were held on a tight leash.
So, having to discuss whether women need men more or the other way around is a hard to approach topic even if we are to take into consideration the many and impactful changes that have taken place. The past 100 years or so, have brought about quite the cataclysmic change for the “weaker sex”, as men preferred to derogatively address women in the past. And, so far, it appears that women are not as weak as men wanted them to believe and they are doing quite fine making a place for themselves in present society.

Women have to face certain disadvantages in some cases
Unfortunately, there are still many instances in which women are placed in a disadvantage in favor of men. If you consider that, human rights, democracy and constraints aside, there are still billion of places where women are still paid less for the same working position as a man, then it is quite clear that things are not yet as they should be. However, most women persevere and they are now financially independent, which permits them a great deal of opportunities that were once unimaginable.

For some women, old habits die hard
There is no issue now for a woman to have a high-paid job and to afford to leisurely take care of herself and others. However, old habits die hard and there are still many women who opt for being taken care of by their male counterparts. Overall, there are still more women who are being sustained by men than men who rely on women for a living. This leads us to believe that, financially speaking, women have yet to get fully accustomed to the concept of not needing a man to rely on for money. But, that does not apply to the majority of women, and strangely enough it seems that men are more socially and emotionally disconcerted without having a female partner than the other way around.

Dealing with single life appears to be harder for men
Although it is a unanimously accepted truth that both men and women complete each other and are happier to be in relationship than to be alone, it appears to be harder for men to deal with single life than for women.
Divorced people with children seem to enforce this belief since men have a harder time in managing the tasks that were once delegated solely to women, mothers in particular. Rarely do you see a single father easily dealing with household and parenting affairs on his own while there are still numerous single mothers out there that do more than well in facing the difficulties of a single parent raising their children.
Just take a look at your grandparents and you will notice a similar phenomenon when it comes down to widowers being able to take care of themselves. How many old male widowers are able to maintain a stable and fulfilling life after losing their spouses in comparison to female widowers? And how many of them rely more on outside help?
There were studies conducted and single men are worse off than single women. Statistically, men who aren’t married have higher risks of becoming alcoholics, to abuse substances in general, to drive faster and have more accidents and reckless and unproductive lives than women places in the same situations. Therefore, it seems that, from an emotional perspective, men need women more to achieve a stable life than the other way around. While women have a hard time being alone or without a romantic partner, men seem to have a lot harder after a certain age. And, compared to the changes a man brings into a woman’s life, the ones that a woman causes to a man’s life are often more positive altogether.
It is hard to apply this conclusion to a certain individual, yet it is clear that the majority rule emphasizes that men need women more than vice versa and, by the way things keep on changing, there is a high probability to believe that this will be even more so in the future. The only certainty that remains is that both men and women need each other, although by different degrees.
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ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson

An Entrepreneur and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. He holds first degree in Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ghana; Political Science (major) and History (minor). He has also pursued MSc Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) at the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow (YALI) who studied at Clark Atlanta University on the Business and Entrepreneurship track. His mentors are Rupert Murdoch, Warren Buffet, Sam Jonah, Kwaku Sakyi Addo and Piers Morgan